Wiman, Leif G

Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute.

2001 (English)Report (Other academic)

Abstract [en]

In 1997 Finland and Sweden jointly invested in a Heavy Vehicle Simulator, HVS, from South Africa. After the first period in Finland the HVS-NORDIC was moved to Sweden and VTI (Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute) in Linkoping in September 1998.

A program for research co-operation in the area of accelerated pavement testing has been agreed between Finland and Sweden covering the years 1997-2003.

The general objective of the research co-operation is to learn more about pavement response and pavement performance. A second but most important objective is to learn about the HVS-machine itself and the way it simulate traffic and deteriorate pavements and how this is related to real pavement performance.

During the first year in Sweden, 1999, tests were performed as planned in the research program on typical Swedish low volume road structures. The results from these tests are presented in this report.

The HVS-NORDIC is a mobile linear full-scale accelerated pavement-testing machine (HVS Mark IV). At VTI there is an indoors full-scale pavement test facility where pavements can be constructed by ordinary road construction machines.

During the first year in Sweden four structures were tested. The first two tests (SE01 and SE02) were performed on newly built pavements (gravel/bitumen type with thin asphalt surface layers) while the other two were performed after rehabilitation of the first two after completed tests. The rehabilitation measure was milling and levelling (overlay in the milled area) of the surface layer to get a new even surface without rutting.

The results evaluated in this report are the results from the pavement performance measurements, (rutting and deformation). A large amount of data has been collected during the pavement response measurements. These data, stresses, strains and deflections during a variety of test conditions will be used later for comparison of the test structures and for analysis of relations between pavement response and pavement performance.